


Space

by JustaGibbsgirl



Series: Six Degrees of Jaqueline Sloane [5]
Category: NCIS
Genre: F/M, Slibbs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:13:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25588069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustaGibbsgirl/pseuds/JustaGibbsgirl
Summary: A case study of Special Agent Jacqueline Sloane
Relationships: Jethro Gibbs/Jacqueline "Jack" Sloane
Series: Six Degrees of Jaqueline Sloane [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1847821
Comments: 9
Kudos: 49





	Space

  
“My spot open tonight?” her text message read.

His eyes traveled the length of his couch and back again, weighing her question.

  
Tattered edges, sunken imprints, worn material that knew him intimately. There was a lot of empty space on his empty couch. Always was. Whole lot of self-inflicted emptiness in his life, period. He read her text again. The hardest days always found that text on his phone. And their days didn’t always match. Her days were different than his. Sometimes longer, sometimes shorter, sometimes more intricate, sometimes less detailed. Just depended on the hour of the day. There were times she would accept the empty spot next to him in person. Then there were the moments when she was content in simply knowing he existed on the couch miles away, and the space was there if she needed it.   


**

  
Three and a half weeks ago, the cushions had offered what they both needed – the ability to absorb their bodies as they let the grief of the day wash over them. Her spot, on those days, was anywhere on that couch that invaded his space. 

  
He had lifted his head slightly when he heard her socked feet pad softly over hardwood, stopping at the fridge to grab some beer before coming to a stop in front of him. He knew they would only make it through a half bottle each, because while alcohol numbed their pain separately, together, they were each other’s much needed drink, the safe haven that provided so much more than a swallow of even the strongest brew.

  
Searching her face, her eyes, even her movements, for a place to start this sharing of space, his hand had reached for hers. Checking her steadiness was not innate for him, it was learned. Some nights they shook slightly, sometimes it was his that needed the steadying. That night, though? Hers had trembled and he had felt it in his bones. 

  
She had pulled him to a sitting position and he leaned into her, his head resting on her stomach as his hands had found a landing spot on her hips. She had sucked in the air around her as if it would be her last breath. Her fingers had slid off his shoulders to the wide expanse of his back and the thin, worn t-shirt he wore had allowed her to read his mood through touch. Her nails had drawn slow patterns and he’d taken a slow shaky breath, gripping her hips tighter while he held it in then exhaled softly. They drank each other in. Her fingers had continued their Rorschach patterns, tracing and retracing. She’d let one hand slide to his neck, the other a one time slide through silver strands. He’d fought to stay steady as the world spiraled around him.

  
Those were the moments he could easily have convinced himself that his self-inflicted sabbatical from women wasn’t worth it. That the end didn’t justify the means. That the price he was paying from being distanced from the space of an incredible woman had never felt more wrong. Jack was a woman who had every piece of the puzzle right. Damaged as she claimed to be, her pieces fit even where they weren’t supposed to because she smoothed the rough edges, and they simply fell into place.

His puzzle? His had all the Gibbsian pieces sticking out at all the wrong angles. He ached every single day. Each 24 hour period held an ache that found him no matter where he hid. It was an ache that belonged to no one _but_ him.

  
Some days it was a miniscule ache that he could fit nice and neat in his back pocket. Sometimes it weighed a little more and he had to toss it in his backpack. And on the worst days, it was immeasurable and it usually landed right square in his chest. Those were the days he needed her the most. Those were the moments he reached for her with a glance. With a long exhaled breath. With a sad smile that never reached his eyes. With biting, stinging words that he didn’t intend.

  
His head lifted away from her stomach and his tired gaze had met hers. He asked the question with his eyes. He asked this question a lot. The answer always depended on how much shrapnel they were both willing to end up absorbing into their already battered hearts.

  
Her answer was with her hands. A soft, barely noticeable push of his shoulders. Sinking back into the intimacy of the cushions that had been his respite longer than any of his marriages, his hands pulled her hips back with him. A knee to either side of his thighs, she had slowly lowered herself into his lap, settling into their shared space.

  
She had known it was coming. She had been planning for it all day. The hands on her hips had moved to her waist and circled behind her, pulling her closer into the space between them. When her arms had finally lifted and fell together behind his neck, he increased the pressure against her. She had dropped her head to his neck as the weight of his arms unraveled the thick, dense weight that the day had dealt to them both.

  
If there was a want for any more than a strong bear hug, any more than the warmth already passing between them, it would be waiting for longer than this moment. The heaviness of the day simply would not allow for it. Even when all the air had left her lungs from the strength of his arms, she had pressed herself even harder against his chest, needing the tightness of his embrace to hold all the broken pieces together.

  
He’d buried his face in her neck, in her hair, in the softness of her scent. Time failed to register properly when they held each other so deeply, so securely. Like Dahli’s Persistence of Memory, time melted around them. Every movement between them was almost perfunctory, without effort, without thought. It was instinct, it was innate, it was melding two exhausted human hearts into one.

  
And though there were plenty of days where invasion of space meant breathing on different ends of the couch, or even different ends of the house, it was still space. Space that held them both accountable for each other, for their own thoughts. And somewhere in the past few years, in every shared memory, in each secret held tight, one had become accountable for the other. Neither of them was a stranger to the rain, to the storm clouds, to the hurricanes but it was the shelter that patiently waited for them in each other’s arms that hushed the winds and waters.

  
Sliding off his lap to the space next to him, reaching across to lay claim to his hand, she had reached to the connection that she knew would calm her churning heart and whistling mind.   
Fingers laced, warmth caught and spread, bodies tucked and settled, held breaths exhaled. That night had been like so many others since her firecracker entrance into his life. Steady breathing, dropped lashes, and a security in their dreams that only presented itself within their shared space.

  
**

  
Tonight, though, was a night that her soul fought to find him across the city lights, the siren wails, and the rain that beat a hard rhythm against her living room windows. Tempted as she was to drag her broken pieces to the safety of his space, her feet did not agree. She could not bring them to take the steps to her car, much less his front door. Her couch sighed its loneliness and she could hear the echo back from his. So her fingers had asked the question when her voice could not. “My spot open tonight?”

  
The response that had come back was a grainy flip phone photo of an empty couch cushion. She had hoped that the image would kick start her feet in the direction of the door, but it only made them heavier tonight. The lead from her heart had shifted to her legs and weighed her down.

  
When it took more than 3 minutes for her response, he knew they would be sharing space apart. This was a night when the phone batteries would reach their limits. But no matter the antique settings of his flip phone, his words would still find her.

  
The USMC shirt, two sizes too big, held her when she wouldn’t allow him to. The soft grey tee emblazoned with ARMY was used as a pillow cover on the nights he reached into the space that was hers and she wasn’t there. Whether separate or together, the space they shared was theirs alone. It was intimate and hidden. It cost them nothing to occupy each other’s space. Nothing and yet everything. 


End file.
